Media Release
Date: 31 December 2014
Survey Shows Satisfaction with Waikato Maternity Services Keeps Improving
A snapshot survey of 144 women across the
Waikato shows high level of satisfaction with the maternity
services they received.
All the women were using maternity services – including Waikato Hospital wards, women’s outpatient services, rural and primary birthing services – during the last week of November 2014.
The survey follows a similar one in December 2013, and is part of the Waikato DHB’s wider maternity improvement programme that is starting to pay big dividends.
Results include 90 percent of women being happy or very happy with their antenatal care, 84 percent happy or very happy with their birth care, and 81 percent happy or very happy with their postnatal care. The latter two are improvements on the previous year’s survey results.
Clinical midwife director Corli Roodt said the survey aims to identify both areas of strength and areas for improvement, and to make sure maternity services are meeting women’s needs.
“We are grateful to the women who gave their time to complete the survey. Their feedback is a really important way to keep improving,” she said.
“This year the results were fairly similar to last year, and the survey once again indicates that on the whole women are satisfied with maternity services in the Waikato.”
She said the services will follow up where women commented on areas that needed improvement, including pregnancy and parenting services, and access to scanning services.
“These two areas were identified last year as well, and we have already started to make good progress on them.”
Other areas identified as needing improvements in the previous survey were communication between doctors, midwives and lead maternity carers (LMCs) particularly in antenatal clinics; reduction in wait times for induction of labour; and access to antenatal classes.
“In the past 12 months we have
worked hard on those issues and I’m pleased to say they
are now appearing in the latest survey in the list of things
women felt worked well,” Ms Roodt said.
Summary of
survey results November 2014 survey:
• 93% of
women reported registering with an LMC as easy or very
easy.
• 82% of women reported being registered
with an LMC at 12 weeks or earlier. 7% improvement on last
year
• 83% reported of women reported they had
access to all the services they needed or wanted.
•
90% of women reported they were happy or very happy with the
standard of their Antenatal care. The same as last
year.
• 84% of women reported they were happy of
very happy with their birth care. 5% improvement on last
year.
• 81% of women reported they were happy or
very happy with their postnatal care. 3% improvement on last
year.
The survey was completed by all women represented of the birthing population: 58% NZ European, 25% Maori, 4% Indian, 2% Chinese and 11% other.
Birth locations
At
Home 5%
Primary birthing unit 23%
Waikato
Hospital 58%
Other location 2%
No Response 12%
ends